The Pro-Ana community has always consisted of using acronyms while talking about their community. It is seemed that this is to make it so that those who are not apart of their community will not understand what they are talking about. Although at first glance, this would seem to be true, it is not exactly point on. When looking at something writing about pro-ana, you may not completely understand what the person is trying to say. But once you go deeper, it is not so hard to figure it out. Sometimes, you can simply use the context clues from other parts of the post to figure out what the acronym stands for. Others may not be so easy to find out. This will require some extra work to figure out, which is not actually much work at all. All it takes is a quick google search. Before starting my research, I was completely unsure of what anything meant when I looked at the Pro-Ana sights. All it took was a simple google search for Pro-Ana acronyms and everything I needed to know was at my fingertips.

I feel as though this is the best kept secret of the pro-ana community. When looked at by the average person who is not familiar with pro-ana, you would just see a colored bracelet. I did not realize there were special bracelets that determine what type of eating disorder the person has and/or have. Once I started researching the disorder, I quickly came across this information. Each color represents a different disease. If the bracelet is only made up of the colored bead, the person is living with the disease. If the person puts a single white bead on their bracelet, then they want to recover from the disease. If the person has half colored beads and half white beads, then they are in the process of recovering from the disease. The site, braceletproject.tumblr.com provides information on how the project works. It stated, "What we support is the project being used as a way to help one get better from whatever they are suffering from. To raise awareness for these issues/illnesses and to help those suffering connect with others in order to support them and find support for themselves." The problem with this is that while they are providing awareness for the diseases, people are making them into something that supports the issue of the disease. When celebrities are seen wearing the bracelets, it also has a huge motivation for young girls to do the same thing. They want to wear them to show that they are pro-ana/mia like the celebrities, not to make people aware of a disease.

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Through their blogs, pro-ana girls are able to express their "adventures" with Ana and what types of things are motivating them. They discuss these things using what they think is a secret language that only those in the community will understand. The problem with this is that once someone reads the posts, they can decode their language and know what they are saying. They pro-ana community talks in a way that may seem positive and inspiring, but in reality has a bad effect on those who are inspired by it. It seems as though they want to be fit and healthy but they are actually being extremely unhealthy. In their article, Self-Injury: The Secret Language of Pain for Teenagers, Len Austin and Julie Kortum discuss why people use these languages. They said, "It seems that through this body language, self-injuring children and teenagers can communicate much more directly and forcefully than they can speak in words." This leads you to think about what the pro-ana community is really trying to do. Are they afraid to speak their mind about their body and therefore feel the need to show it twisting the ideas of pictures and quotes?

above picture found on google search

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